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We also went to some effort to make all the turbo plumbing look as realistically factoryish as possible. This included painting the steel intercooler piping with that same truck bed liner, and using stock intake hose parts for intake plumbing. The blow-off valve is on the cold-side pipe by the throttle body (mounted under the pipe) and is recirculated to the intake plumbing through this little adapter piece we made to splice the B13 SE-R intake hose into the next bit of mystery black hose that makes up the intake plumbing (this piece was later painted with the same truck bed liner). Note the radiator hose conveniently serving up the last few bends to tuck the bypass flow into the bottom of the intake hose.
In the last two shots you can see one red silicone hose on the turbo discharge. We later turned this hose black with silicone tape, a technique I detailed in Wrench Tips HERE. While the car has an aftermarket radiator, it could otherwise pass for a factory ‘90s turbo car.
There are a lot of advantages to an ugly car, and this is one of them. Sarah wanted to get more comfortable with oversteer, so the last thing we did before painting the car was spend a day at El Mirage dry lake bed practicing. This is a great environment for practicing car control, since the grip is lower than pavement, but the surface is still hard enough to make the tires squeal. Multiple passes over the same spot will start to tear up the surface, which can really harsh the mellow of the next lunatic to cross that patch of desert at high speed, so its wise not to over-use one patch of lakebed. In fact, its really wise not to do this at all. We had El Mirage coming out of every crack and crevice of the car for at least a year after this…
Since this story has been far from chronological, you’ve already seen how the paint job turned out, but perhaps you didn’t recognize the description-defying shade of brownish. It is, in fact, a relatively rare Infiniti color called Beryllium. Beryllium is, of course, a bluish grey metal, so that’s a natural name for a brown color, right?
I have no idea how to guarantee a good paint job. I’ve had a few cars painted and it's always a crap shoot finding a painter who is going to have the level of attention to detail that you want at a price you can stomach. That said, there are a few things I’ve learned that will at least help improve your chances. One is not to trust them to do a good job masking. If a piece of trim can be removed, remove it. We pulled all the removable trim, headlights, taillights, door handles, etc. A good paint guy is probably not a good car assembling guy, so we did that stuff ourselves.
